In a column for Yezhednevny Zhurnal, Anton Orekh discusses a rare case of a St. Petersburg judge who defied his country’s judicial status quo by brazenly throwing out charges against Madonna for spreading “homosexual propaganda.”

One of the Russian Defense Ministry officials fired as part of a recent federal corruption probe fears that he may be in for the same fate as Sergei Magnitsky, after being placed in pre-trial detention and denied medical care for his heart condition.

A case in St. Petersburg against Madonna for spreading “homosexual propaganda” has been shot down in court, but not before defendants linked her performance to a future weakened national defence capacity and the “neutering” of gender among Western children.

Three prominent Russian leftist organizations have published an open letter calling for solidarity in the fight against Russian political prisoners, bringing much-needed attention to the plight of more than a dozen recently-arrested activists.

Russia human rights advocates have handed over information about the alleged physical and psychological torture of opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev to the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

Yekaterina Samutsevich, the member of the jailed Pussy Riot trio who was released on parole last month, is asking a Moscow court to become involved in a case that might declare a video of the group’s performance to be “extremist.”

In this column for Gazeta.ru, religious historian Boris Falikov talks about how this sudden burst of ire against Mormons in Russia has far more to do with the Russian Orthodox Church’s own political problems than any actual threat.